How to use colour schemes to maximise office productivity

Have you ever wondered why walkers strolling through a green forest feel so much more relaxed after their walk? Or how sitting on a white sandy beach looking out to an impossibly blue sea is the top image when employees think about their next holiday? It’s not rocket science; instead, it is a science called chromopathy.

Colour therapy or chromotherapy has come a long way from the days when a therapist would sit you in front of a fire engine red wall to energise you or put you in a room infused with blue light to cool you down.

Companies such as Dulux have come up with a range of paints for hospitals and other health-related organisations to use in decorating new wards. Links between the recovery rate of patients and colour were documented in the 2004 study The Application of Color in Healthcare Settings by Sheila J Bosch et al.

Further studies have been conducted providing evidence that well-designed physical settings help to increase safety and healing. Equally importantly, correct colour coordination creates a better working environment.

Office fit out companies have adapted this science into their design concept. If the right colours in your reception area could leave a positive and lasting impression on potential clients walking through the door, a manager’s duck egg blue office blue suggests approachability to subordinates or daubing sunflower yellow paint on a wall in the R&D department could enhance creativity, why not? They all add up to increase the bottom line.

Companies such as Mobius at work specialise in office fit outs and aim to help clients to maximise office productivity. Whether you want to motivate, calm or create a happy environment for your employees, colour is a cheap and easily accessible way to achieve the end result.

Astronomer Carl Sagan: we’re made of star-stuff

Every colour vibrates in accordance with its own specific wavelength. All creatures on earth are comprised of vibrating energy and every organ in the human body has its own unique colour. The organs in a healthy man vibrate in harmony with the frequency of the colours associated with these organs. A healthy body creates a glowing aura – think of Joseph and his amazing technicolour dream coat. Why not use colour to make all your employees into Josephs?